Tag Archives: power

Stuff it: Titles and their place in the 21st century

The allure of adulthood includes being allowed to drink alcohol, enter a club or bar, browse any website and other pleasures. The period of abstinence is designed for us to later abhor these things or love them in moderation. Growing up really is a journey towards the light because childhood is a sort of tyranny…

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Why unequal gender relations are bad for everyone

Bathing in the warm, fuzzy glow of pay day, my boyfriend and I decided to head out for a drink this past Friday evening. We had set out later than planned, and it was a dark but warm night. The roads were busy, and we made our way from Illovo towards Melville via Parkhurst. The…

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Power, Malema and the ANC

Could Foucault’s notion of discourse give one a purchase on South African politics? Indeed, it can, specifically by clarifying the relationship between ANCYL leader Julius Malema and the parent body of the ANC. For Foucault, after the student protests of 1968 one could no longer really believe in the kind of (Althusserian) structuralist Marxist science…

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The importance of teaching Foucault in a time of conformism

Every time I teach a course on that inimitable “archaeological” and simultaneously “genealogical” thinker Michel Foucault I realise how important it is for students to be exposed to, and engage with, his unique mode of transformative thinking and praxis, or perhaps, thinking AS praxis. For make no mistake, to discover Foucault as a philosopher is…

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No government can take away our rights

By Amukelani Mayimele When you vote you change nothing. Things will only change if we change our way of thinking and do things for ourselves. Figures show that we vote but do we hold our leaders accountable? Do we know the policies that are approved on our behalf? Do we recommend solutions to government? Are…

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